Mayonnaise
by MrsDaniSSnape
Summary: Post War: AU after the end of Deathly Hallows. The Death Eaters escape from Azkaban and Severus Snape is their Undesirable Number One. Headmistress McGonagall sends him into hiding in Ireland, were he meets someone he presumed dead. M for a reason, please R&R, keep in mind that this isn't a very happy fanfiction. SSHG
1. Prologue

**A/N: **

_This is not my first fanfiction, although it is the first I have made on this profile and the first I have written in around three or four years. I'm not going to tell you what the other one's are because they were written when I was young and had no practice and I'd like to forget about them all together if at all possible. I have only a general outline plan made up, and because of the fact that I'm almost making it up as I go along, posting will be very irregular. Shit happens. There might be two days gap between posts, there might be a months. I'm sorry about that but I felt I should definitely warn anyone who will get frustrated with that straight away._

_The common plot line of fanfiction that I'm both basing this fanfiction off of and also totally ignoring is the one that goes like this: Everyone thinks Severus is dead - Hermione falls in love with the idea of him being all dark and mysterious and having saved all their lives - turns out Severus isn't dead but he's very broken and needs help - cue romance._

_I'm twisting this around backwards. I thought it would be fresh for everyone to think Hermione was dead and that she would save Severus' life and that he'd (once again, unfortunately enough for him) fall in love with a dead woman who showed him kindness._

_Also, just as a heads up, music is going to feature heavily in this fanfiction, and though it is set in the time frame of the year 1999+ (apart from this chapter, the prologue), I'm not going to bother limiting myself with only music that came before that year, as a decent chunk of the relevant music used in this fanfiction will probably have been made after that. So if you dare to skip past this and then try to correct me about it later I will cyber-slap you out of it. I will include a list of any and all songs (even if they are only briefly mentioned or hummed or something) in an author's note at the end of every chapter._

_**This fic is rated M for violence, swearing (a LOT of swearing), touchy subjects including domestic abuse, miscarriages, attempted suicide and self mutilation. You have been warned. This is not a cheery fic, and I beg you to remember that as we go on. Thank you.**_

**I do not own any characters who's names are recognised from the Harry Potter series. I do, however, own some of my own. I do not profit from writing this fanfiction, so don't go suing me like an asshole.**

**Prologue**

The dull roaring in her ears reminded her of taking off in a plane, and her eardrums hadn't popped yet. It felt like pressure from nothing. It made her blind, deaf and dumb.

Hermione Granger stood in the center of The Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, watching the lifeless body of the Dark Lord Voldemort keel slowly backwards. Red, evil eyes frozen in shock stared without seeing from a grey face that had long ago lost any trace of belonging to a human being.

The back of Voldemort's head connected to the stone floor of the castle with a deafening crack. His death was ironically mortal; the body crumpled on the ground, undignified and final.

All hell broke loose.

The safety of pressure left her in a sudden rush of sound and colour. There was a unified flick of turning dark robes as the remaining Death Eaters tried to escape, having easily justified their abandonment of their cause after watching their revered Master fall uncermeniously dead at the Potter boy's feet. _No loyalty among cowards._ Hermione thought fleetingly. She couldn't seem to make herself focus on anything except her own heartbeat, suddenly aware of how very much alive she was. The familiar 'thun-thun' of her too-quick pulse assured her that maybe she would live through the end after all. Lord Voldemort was finally dead. They could end it now. They could claim their victory.

_Although could you really call it victory?_

Hermione forced the bile creeping up her throat back down into the depths and forcefully held it there. She knew she should be helping and internally she kicked herself and her frantic uselessness - standing around gaping like a First Year on the lake wasn't going to help catch loose Death Eaters. It wouldn't treat the injured.

Wouldn't avenge the dead.

Her heart and soul crushed themselves into miniscule pieces of shattered dust that dissipated into the stone of the castle just as the mis-aimed spells and hexes did as they crackled past her person. She could feel the heat radiating from the more deadly ones as they whizzed and dislodged her hair.

Hermione Granger stood stock still in the middle of The Final Battle and counted the dead.

The bodies of Remus and Tonks lay on their backs, hands almost touching on the floor only a handful of feet away. _Remus and Dora Lupin. _She corrected herself. Married with dreams that would never be fulfilled, they had left behind a baby that would never understand why he didn't have a Mummy and Daddy to tuck him in at night and tell him "Sweetie, there's no such thing as monsters". _Of course there are monsters_, Hermione thought bitterly. _Monsters are the reason he won't have parents._

Fred Weasley. She could spot a shock of fire-red hair in a corner by the rubble and a shattered window. Fred; one half of a duo that could not exist fractured. She wondered for a moment how George was going to cope with his death when the adrenaline of battle was missing and the chance of revenge was either seized or left hanging. Hermione knew they wouldn't get every Death Eater, that was inevitable. Someone always escaped, but their job was to minimize the importance and number of the someones. Hermione thought back to the night where George has lost his ear. _Foreshadowing,_ she thought, _one half of a pair taken away in battle_. It would have been almost funny if it was something she'd have read in a work of fiction. But this had happened, and it was staring her in the face.

Poor little Colin Creevey sat propped against the wall, wide-eyed and very dead. Hermione remembered the small boy with too much enthusiasm fondly, and recognised that he had easily had the best photography skills she had ever seen. And with a Wizard's Camera, no less. Colin wasn't meant to have been able to stay behind. He was neither seventeen or in his seventh year at school. Gryffindor recklessness coupled with a desire to protect and serve the building that he and his brother had considered a home-away-from-home for years led to this unforgivable breaking of rules. This obviously had the more than unfortunate consequence of him walking into his own death. Maybe Colin had known it to be a suicide mission and felt as if he needed to help anyway. That went far beyond being a golden, noble Gryffindor. That was being both foolish and yet more selfless than probably anyone else in this room had ever been.

Hermione wondered what would happen to his photographs.

A deathly green spell buzzed passed her ear. She did not flinch.

Four. So far.

Her eyes crawled across the room methodically and found no more dead lying on the stone. She did find dying, however, but she was too numb, her vision surrounded by a haze and feeling as if there was a layer of unyeilding fuzz over her skin. _Useless!_ she screamed to herself, and yet she still could not will her body into movement. She was using all her control to keep her stomach acid down as it was. That was all that was in her stomach too: she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. Hermione thought for a fleeting moment that perhaps she should be worried about that. She wasn't.

Her eyes fell to the doors of the Great Hall, where one had been broken into brittle pieces and was being used as clubs by those who had lost their wands. Out in the halllways lying with her face turned in the direction of the open doors was Lavender Brown. Pretty blue eyes, blank in a white face. Cannibalised by a werewolf Death Eater, still in human form.

Five.

Hearing noises behind her she turned her head to watch seven of Voldemort's followers scream in angony as their skin was melted from their bones by a particularly vengeful Order Member whom Hermione did not recognise. The screaming stopped soon after it started.

Twelve.

An Auror and a man who did not don the robes of the Dark were locked in a battle of vicious curses and dark hexes. Hermione recognised the Auror as Dawlish, a thin man with a balding head sparsley populated with brown locks, who had once tried to arrest the Great Albus Dumbledore (just the fact that he had tried to take on one of the greatest men in wizarding history showed his loyalty to his position in the Aurory at the Ministry). She assumed his opponent to be a Death Eater sympathiser, if not just an under-dressed Death Eater.

The both of them hit each other with the Killing Curse at the same moment, and both died successful and surprised. Out of the corner of her eye Hermione watched two more Death Eaters drop to the floor dripping blood from head wounds, Professor Trelawney having chucked heavy crystal balls at them. _Divination has it's uses. _Hermione conceded as she watched Trelawney howl like a mad woman. Although Hermione supposed she was a mad woman.

Glancing back into the hall again she saw a mass of Hogwarts robes and counted three differently sized hands with blue fingernails.

Nineteen.

For the first time in her life Hermione Granger truly understood that the end did absolutely _fucking not_ justify the means. Nineteen people in her field of vision dead was nineteen too many, even including the Death Eaters. And that was one room in one massive castle in one battle at one time. She could not help the long and disgusting list of lives that the twenty-three year long war had claimed from presenting themselves as bullet-points in her vision.

Lilly and James Potter. Dead.

Professor Quirrell. Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. Moaning Myrtle (although that had been fifty-odd years ago Hermione felt obligated to include her as a victim of Voldemort, and as she had the significance of having been used to create his first Horcrux from the Diary). All dead.

Twelve unsuspecting and oblivious Muggles at the hands of Peter Pettigrew, and one finger. Tom Riddle Sr, Thomas Riddle, Mary Riddle. Bertha Jorkins. Frank Bryce, the caretaker of the Riddle House, who had been used to create the Horcrux Nagini. Dead because of pure bad luck and a desire to keep the house he had cared for free of hooligans, squatters and children who were too curious for their own good. Dead.

Hermione began to hyperventilate as she continued her count. The bile was churning again.

Barty Crouch Sr, and his son - having been Kissed was also as good as dead. Marlene McKinnon and her whole family had been slaughtered in a Death Eater raid. Gideon and Fabian Prewett, twin brothers of Molly Weasley.

Sirius Black. Dead.

Hepzibah Smith, Amelia Bones, Florean Fortescue, Igor Karkaroff. Regulus Black, Charity Burbage, Alastor Moody, Rufus Scrimgeour.

Hedwig. Dead.

Gregorovitch the wand maker. Bathilda Bagshot. Ted Tonks. Dirk Cresswell. Gornuk the Goblin. Peter Pettigrew, who found out the consequences of trying to deny a Life Debt. Bogrod the Goblin. Vincent Crabbe. Bellatrix Lestrange no less than twenty minutes ago, maybe a little longer, at the hands of the Weasley matriarch who had definitely proved that she would do anything and everything for her babies.

Dobby. The most brave and loyal Free Elf to have ever graced the halls of Hogwarts. Hermione once again had to force herself to not be sick as she remembered that poor, sweet Dobby had died _for her_. If she could have moved she would've fingered the everlasting wounds of an awful word carved into her left forearm with Bellatrix Lestrange's poisoned blade. It couldn't heal, much like the wound Dolohov had left her with in the Department of Mysteries that diagonally bisected her sternum and still burned and weeped if she stretched the skin or scratched it.

Voldemort was dead.

Albus Dumbledore was also dead. The two iconic leaders, the personification of Dark and Light; Voldemort with his demonic appearance and black cloak, and Professor Dumbledore, who looked like a political cartoon of God in his brightly coloured robes. Although, just like God, Hermione knew Dumbledore could be as cruel and ruthless as any Demon, but still think he was doing right.

But someone has to make those decisions, and better it be him than her.

_There still should have never been any decisions to make._

Hermione cursed and internally spat on her near-perfect memory. The battle raged on and she totalled.

At least eighty. Probably more.

Just about to finally finish and accept her numbers and finally join in with the battle that was starting to die down, she felt as if she'd forgotten something. _Maybe if I move now I can still tend to the inj-_

She remembered.

Severus Snape. Professor of Hogwarts, Potions Master, Head of Slytherin House, Death Eater and member of the Order of the Phoenix. Murderer of Albus Dumbledore.

Distantly she heard cheering and her subconscious recognised that the battle had been fought, and finished. But her mind was stuck on one trail of thought and would not be dislodged.

Severus Snape.

Not dead.

* * *

Hermione had never run so fast in her life. She usually avoided doing so as much as possible, on account that she had inherited her Grandad's lungs. Terrible lungs in the first place, and she'd had two extremely bad bouts of pneumonia, one when she was seven and the other during the summer between her third and fourth year, the turmoil had left her with around one lung's worth of working tissue. The rest was made up of useless scar tissue, and did not make for decent sprinting.

Medicinal potions clinked and clanked in a bag she had plucked from a pile of rubble on her way down to the Potion's classroom, begging all the way that she would find something, _anything_, of use. Thankfully, she had managed to procure a Skin-Knitting potion, a Blood-Replenisher and an anti-inflammatory. That was all she had managed however, as everything else in the room had either been taken or was in piles of shattered glass and black goop on the floor. Figures that something meant to heal would turn into sinister looking sludge when it went bad.

Hermione practically flew up the stairs and through the corridors to get out of the castle onto the grounds, her hair whipping against her cheeks when she turned her head every which way to look out for remaining enemies. Passing by the Great Hall she heard someone call her, but in response picked up speed.

If she had the power in her to save this one man today, she would.

Over the grounds towards the Shrieking Shack, she wondered what was provoking her to save him over the rest. A sense of loyalty to a Hogwarts professor, perhaps. Maybe it was because he had been on their side after all - if Harry's speech before he executed Voldemort was to be believed. Perhaps it was because she had been so useless earlier during the Battle and needed to do something to assuage her guilt; maybe she would have done anything.

_Or maybe it's just because you feel bad for him_, Hermione thought to herself. _You shush._

As much as she had been damning and cursing her memory earlier when she recalled the List of the Dead, she was now thanking it profusely for remembering all those "useless facts in textbooks" that the man she was about to save had accused her of memorising. She didn't actively memorise anything, really; if she read something more than once she remembered it anyway. It was usually impossible for Hermione to forget anything. It made arguments with her boys interesting.

She hoped her boys were alright.

She could hear the relevant passage of the book _European Snakes and their Characteristics by E.W. Pipes_ recite itself in her head as she ran. Panting and out of breath. _Why are the grounds so_ bloody _large_.

_"Vipera ammodytes. Colouration is grey with a black zigzag pattern. Dark stripes are usually found behind each eye. This viper is responsible for many bites. Deaths have been recorded. Its venom is hematomic, causing severe pain and tissue damage, and it jaws can come down at 14kgs. However, the viper also uses its venom as a preservative. The venom numbs the body and slows blood flow and heart rate to near death, to preserve the body in a live state for as long as possible. This enables the snake to last through long winters where mammals are in hibernation and the ammodytes finds it harder to hunt. In a human case, if found and treated medically within three hours the rate of survival is decently high; approx. 63%. Common distribution: Italy, Yugoslavia, northern Albania, Romania."_

"A good rate of survival within three hours". By her own count, Hermione figured the professor had been left for around two and a half since Nagini attacked. She quietly thanked the gods that Voldemort didn't allow his pet to eat him also. Although, the fact that the bite had been centered at his throat would have to be factored in. Hermione thought she could do it. Hoped she could.

_Maybe Harry isn't the only one with a "saving people thing"._

She approached the huge, aggressive tree with more than a little apprehension, and began searching for a stick to poke at the immobilising-knot at the base of the tree. Bent over and scrabbling at the dirt, she did not hear or see the branch until it connected with her ribs. She was knocked onto her back in the damp grass. Hermione gasped as the wind was beaten out of her. She both heard and felt the snap of one of her ribs and couldn't help but stifle a sob. It was bad. It hurt, a lot.

Groaning and panting she pushed through the pain and rose to her hands and knees, feeling jagged bone grind off of jagged bone as the segments of her broken ribbed jabbed against each other with every movement she made. Snape better be bloody well thankful when she was finished. She reached the arm above the broken rib slowly and tentatively out to grab a nearby branch; she didn't feel that arm would be able to hold her own weight if she tried to use the other one.

That came to be a bad decision. The branch was slippy with rain but Hermione managed to grip it tightly, and she swung back her arm and threw it forward again, letting the branch loose. It hit perfectly on target.

Her broken rib slid on the inside of her muscles and she felt herself being torn up on the inside, by her bottom rib on the right side, vertically under her arm-pit. She couldn't help but cry out this time. Hermione knew that she'd definitely have internal bleeding as a result, but her number one priority was to get the professor back to the castle, and then she could have Madam Pomfrey fix it for her. Or maybe even Luna, she thought. Luna had a flair for healing spells.

Hermione pulled herself to her feet, trying not to wretch as she was blinded by pain for a few moments. After a few deep breaths she stopped seeing spots and by the time she took her steps towards the entrance in the trunk of the tree, she had steadied herself enough and the pain had reduced to a dull throb; she could now go save the cranky professor who would more than likely have no thanks for her. Typical day in the life of Hermione Granger. _Saving people who forget to say thank you._

* * *

Twenty minutes later the body of a white-as-a-sheet Severus Snape emerged from under the Whomping Willow, being shakily levitated on a badly-transfigured stretcher, held up by nothing other than the sheer determination of a young witch who refused to let one more good wizard die. Okay, well maybe "good" was going a bit far, but she still wanted to save him anyway. Moon crater-sized warts and all.

In a ridiculous amount of pain but triumphant, Hermione limped and gasped her way back in the direction of Hogwarts Castle. There was a side door that came out on the inside of the castle at the portrait of Hogbod the Goblin King on the second floor, located on in the wall in the direction of the Entrance Hall, before you hit the courtyard. She wouldn't take him in the front door. Innocent or not, Hermione thought there would more than likely be a few Aurors or ex-students of his that would like to get a few digs into him before he became an official War Hero.

She hugged the stone wall of the castle as she rounded a corner, keeping Snape's body low and steady to avoid floating him in front of the stain glass windows at the back of the Great Hall. She could hear murmured conversation from inside, and felt vibrations of laughter. Maybe things could go back to normal soon.

Hermione cautiously and slowly rounded the last corner, another thirty steps and she could feel for the fake stone in the wall. When she came out in the second floor there was a portrait of Bartimus the Rowdy that would take her right outside the doors of the Hospital Wing.

Suddenly she nearly swerved into the wall at the sight that greeted her. Hermione was sure she would finally be sick. Out on the grounds of Hogwarts, laid in neat, morbid rows, were bodies. Too many to count this time. Death Eater, Order Member, Hogwarts Student alike, were placed neatly in a scene befitting a history book in a section on the Holocaust. The Deat Eaters were in their own rows, however, laid out more haphazardly and with uncoincidential disrespect. Some were just face-down in the dirt. Unlike the Death Eaters, the rows of students, Aurors and Order of the Phoenix members, were laid out perfectly neat, arms crossed (and sometimes where there were missing limbs, just _arm_), eyes closed, looking peaceful. As if they were only sleeping.

A moment later she really wished she'd had the forward thinking to put Snape under some sort of a Disillusionment charm. She hadn't known what kind of effect magic would have on his poison-riddled body. She didn't want to get beat up by a tree and crawl through dirt just to have him die because she doubted her own stealth. Hermione could feel the area around the broken rib swelling, the skin feeling tight and more than a little tender. Her breathing felt as if she had phlegm in her lungs too, and she categorised that information while pulling herself and Snape as close to the wall as possible, crouching low on the ground to avoid detection. There was no choice in whether to Disillusion him or not now, seeing as she would have to cancel the Levitation charm to do so, and she doubted she would have the strength to pick him back up again. Levitating a feather would have been bad enough in her current condition.

Professor Minerva McGonagall was levitating a bloodied and still Death Eater to join the mass of bodies in the grounds. Her face was pinched, her hair toussled and her robes dishevelled. Hermione's heart beat faster and stronger, drumming a violent tattoo on the inside of her rib cage as the Transfiguration teacher drew unknowingly closer and closer to her and her unconscious companion. Hermione didn't know why she felt she had to hide. It was just McGonagall, but still there was the hum of danger and Hermione had learned nothing over the last year if not to trust her instincts.

The adrenaline in her body hightened her senses as she tried to remain hidden. The _stench_. The copper smell of dried blood, bodies that had emptied both bladders and bowels, and the sickening smell of already-rotting flesh as wounds were left to the elements. Death was neither pretty or elegant.

Hermione couldn't repress the gag. The retching sound drew McGonagall's attention, and maybe ten meters away from the battered duo she dropped the body of the Death Eater on top of another, and swung her wand around in their direction.

"Good gods Miss Granger, are you alright? Oh!" McGonagall gasped as she took in the prone form of Snape on the battered stretcher. "Is that Severus? Potter said he'd died!"

Hermione couldn't manage a reply. She began to retch into the pile of weeds to her right, away from the two Professors. She couldn't stand the aroma of death. Tears leaked from her watery eyes as she threw up nothing but pure stomach acid into the grass on her hands and knees. Her throat began to burn and she let out a sob, which made her gag.

Rinse, repeat.

In her distress, her levitation charm failed and Snape's body dropped from its position of a foot above the ground with an almighty thud. It was fortunate he was deeply unconscious.

"Oh Merlin, Granger!" McGonagall rushed to Hermione's side, but she was waved off into the direction of the other Professor, making unintelligable noises between crying and heaving. The damn holding her together through the battle had obviously broke. She managed to hiccup out "Him - _hic_ - I'm - _hic_ - fine - _retch_ - please!" and though Minerva frowned disapprovingly at her, she moved to tend to the Professor who was in a heap on the ground.

"I'm so glad you found him alive Miss Granger," she started as Hermione's stomach finally stopped seizing. "I couldn't imagine my last words to him being 'coward'. He always hated being called that. Now I suppose I know why." She huffed the last words out of her nose as she stood and re-transfigured the badly-made stretcher into something more suitable for an injured person to be carried on.

"It's not your fault Professor," Hermione reassured her, wiping the sleeve of her jumper across her mouth. "It's not as if you knew he was innocent." Hermione's throat burned, and breathing made the right side of her chest ache. She coughed into her hands and the came away speckled with red. She wiped her mouth again.

"I know that, but still-" McGonagall didn't get to finish her sentence. Hermione shot to her feet despite that burning pain in her upper body, and pointed her wand at the Death Eater, who had his wand fixed right in between her eyes. It was the one McGonagall had carried out herself. Everyone was obviously too exhausted to keep up proper safety measures.

McGonagall couldn't draw her wand to help before the Death Eater started the curse that would end Hemione's life.

"_Avad-"_

"_-a Kadavra!_"

The curse died in his throat as his face morphed into utter shock and disbelief.

McGonagall screamed.

Hermione stared, mouth open and eyes wide at her wand, as she felt her soul rip in two.

* * *

This time when she retched, it was black.

She felt the taste of something _wrong_ on her tongue, as the dark liquid poured from her mouth over the front of her chin, and dribbled slowly onto the front of her chest, creeping down and stinging the wound residing there. It took her a moment to realise that the man who gave her that wound was lying dead at her feet. By her wand.

Murdered.

Hermione's body was wracked with tremors as every single atom in her body vibrated violently in protest. Staring down at her wand she felt disgust and anger. At herself, at her instrument, at magic. She glared, hyperventilating, at the wand like it was the root of all evil.

She supposed for the moment, it was.

She brought it down over her knee and snapped it in two.

McGonagall screamed again.

Snape lay unaware and unconscious still on the floor, probably comatose.

Hermione fell to her knees for the third time in an hour as she felt something else inside her crack. It wasn't her soul, and it wasn't her body; it felt like both and at the same time, neither. Something ethereal yet physical.

In that moment, Hermione Granger hated magic. She hated it more than anything she had ever had negative feelings towards in her life. More than Snape, more than Dolohov. More than Voldemort.

Not as much and more than herself.

The black came forth from her body again. She did not retch this time. She knelt, her legs awkwardly tucked underneath her, her hands grabbing fist-fulls of grass at her sides, knuckles tensed and pale. Her lion's mane of hair fell around her shoulder's and she stared, eyes dead, into the distance. Distantly, she thought she heard McGonagall calling her name. From her eyes, ears and the corners of her mouth came spilling forth a black, thick liquid. It was a dark parody of Professor Snape's leaking memories. There was nothing to learn from this material: nothing salvagable.

Hermione Granger's magic was leaving her body, and there would be no putting it back.

Briefly she wondered if she was dying.

For a little longer than briefly she thought maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea.

She took a shuddering breath and spoke to McGonagall. "Please."

"Please what, Miss Granger?" she near-shouted at Hermione, coming to kneel beside her student. She felt internally repulsed by her for some reason, but the girl needed help. "What have you done to yourself, girl?"

Hermione looked her in the eyes and pleaded. "I need to leave." Her face was begging.

"What do you mean 'leave'? We need to get you to Poppy, on your feet!"

Hermione allowed herself to be pulled into standing, but wouldn't move forward.

"I'm dead."

"Don't be stupid girl, I'm looking right at you."

"Tell them I died." Hermione clutched at the older woman's wrinkled wrists, becoming frantic. "Please Professor, I need to leave, tell them I died! No-one can know! Professor please!"

"Calm down Miss Granger!"

"I'll owe you Professor please you have to do this for me Professor _please_!" She ended on a strangled cry, her thoughts were buzzzing angrily, she needed to leave. She needed to leave NOW, and no-one could come for her.

"Okay, okay, Miss Granger, we'll get you straight up to Poppy and then we'll get you out of here-"

"No Professor you don't understand." Hermione began whispering, looking crazed and pained. "I can't go in there, Professor _I'll die. _I need to leave, and no-one can come after me. No more magic, _no more magic. _Tell them I died saving Snape, please Professor I can't do this, they _can't know_."

McGonagall didn't know what to do. Hermione pulled away from her mentor and teacher, and struggled to walk slowly away. McGonagall's eyes watered.

"Alright Miss Granger, alright." She started to cry in earnest. "Where will you go? You will owe me this Miss Granger! And one day this will be yours to explain!"

"Dublin, Dublin. I'm sorry, _I'm sorry_!" Hermione herself began to cry again, limping hurriedly away from the castle. Away from McGonagall. Away from Snape. Away from friends.

Away from magic.

She heard one last cry of "Miss Granger" before she was gone.

* * *

_The reference of Severus hitting the ground with "an almighty thud" is taken from the song An Almighty Thud by We Were Promised Jetpacks._

_Read and Review, tell me how I did and whether I should definitely continue._


	2. Chapter One: Peter

**A/N:**

_I'm sorry about how badly I really have been updating. I have problems with ear pain and my hearing and some days it's just so hard to get up out of bed at all; but well, chronic pain will do that to you. Thank you so much for your lovely reviews, and oh wow I was not expecting as many favourites and follows as I got! I'm so happy, honestly! You're all great. Again, I apologise about the massive gap in between the chapters. Life is hectic, and I have Gay Pride this Saturday and that'll more than likely end up with me passed out in a ditch until next week, so I'm sorry in advance if there's another gap after this chapter too (although hopefully there won't be). (Also just as a point of shameless pride, any dates I use in this fic will be accurate because I love doing stuff like that). On with the show!_

_**This fic is rated M for violence, swearing (a LOT of swearing), touchy subjects including domestic abuse, miscarriages, attempted suicide and self mutilation. You have been warned. This is not a cheery fic, and I beg you to remember that as we go on. Thank you.**_

**I do not own any characters who's names are recognised from the Harry Potter series. I do, however, own some of my own. I do not profit from writing this fanfiction, so don't go suing me like an asshole.**

* * *

**Chapter One: Peter  
**

* * *

_"I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise."  
__-Richard Brautigan  
_

* * *

Professor Severus Snape sat at the Head Table in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, watching as his porridge slowly turned from breakfast into cold mush. He thought it fascinating how the longer he left it, the more it looked like pig-feed. He cut an intimidating figure at the head of the room. No student dared to meet his eyes during breakfast, or any other time of the day for that matter. Only the foolhardy and reckless gave Professor Snape any reason at all to take House Points or give detentions.

He reached with a sallow, thin hand to rub the aching scars that wrapped his neck, hidden under his high-collar teaching robes. Red and still very raw, the Scottish September weather was making them flare up again. They had been given their time to heal, but Nagini's poison was not something to take lightly. It was a miracle he wasn't dead. The damp and chill weather seemed to ache through the scars, leaving a dull, tight pain that urged him to stretch his neck. He wouldn't, obviously. He had no desire to advertise his injuries to the masses.

The date was Sunday the nineteenth of September. School had been in session for two and a half weeks so far, and Severus was already tired. A year and four months since the Final Battle and the castle was finally in a functional state again, and once again the halls could flood with eager students without the looming threat of the Dark Lord and death in their distant future. The students were again free to annoy their Potions Master.

There was a near unmanagable number of First Years this year; all students who had attended Hogwarts during the Death Eater's occupation of the castle were required to repeat their school year, and there were also the incoming first years who should have started September 1998, and the one's who were supposed to start in this September of '99. All-in-all, there were eighty-four new first years ranging from the age of eleven to thirteen, and the castle and its staff were exhausted. The very stone of the establishment seemed to sink away in fear from the noise of First Year footsteps. Classes for the First Years were being taught only a house at a time, and Severus did have to aprecciate the lack of Gryffindor-Slytherin dynamics in class. He found it strenuous to supervise twenty-ish cauldrons at once instead of the usual fourteen or fifteen, but he was noticing less of a competition for points now that the houses didn't share classrooms, and there was less inter-house drama to attend to. Merlin knew he was sick of arguing with Minerva over Griffyndor-Slytherin Potions classes.

What was left of the Seventh Years that had participated in the Final Battle had been given a choice to resume their schooling, or to try and journey straight into the working Wizarding World. Practically all of them had elected to come and finish their education. As much as Severus found it stressful to have to act as a Professor over students like Longbottom and Finnegan after the dispicable acts he let the Carrows escape punishment for, he was reluctantly impressed with their initiative. Staff-room rumours had it that Longbottom was planning to apprentice under Sprout when he concluded his final year and N.E.W.T.s. Severus supposed Finnegan would be best off choosing to go to work in a firework's emporium.

The youngest of the first years being eleven, and some of the oldest Seventh Years being nineteen, there was the largest age-gap that Hogwarts had seen since it catered to adults back in the 1320's.

The Golden trio hadn't come back. The two buffoons playing man-dress-up had fared straight into Auror training the July after the Final Battle, and courtesy of newly appointed Minister for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt, would be taking their final exams to become Dark-Wizard Catchers in the next four months. The girl was dead.

Severus tried to tell himself that he didn't care.

_Try_ being the operative word.

Severus himself, however, had not come back to Hogwarts of his own volition. Headmistress Minerva McGonagall had guilted him into coming back, which he mistakingly thought was just until she could "find a replacement for Horace". Well apparently she did find a replacement, as not hours later she then manipulated him into a wand-oath, pledging himself as Potions Professor for another five years. Slughorn had resigned not ten minutes after receiving his Order of Merlin: Third Class, and Minerva had not found another English-speaking Potions Master to take his place. The eldest Weasley brother, William, had stepped in to take the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, feeling he should stay in Britain seeing as his French half-Veela wife was pregnant and couldn't travel the world with her curse-breaking husband. Severus supposed that they would determine whether the position was still jinxed by the year's closing.

Severus took a gulp of strong tea, grimacing as the heat irritated a sensitive tooth, and continued to ignore his breakfast. He used his tongue to prod one of his molars on the right side. He assumed there was a hole, even if he couldn't feel it right away. Years of neglect and sugar-filled food had left his teeth in somewhat of a state. Severus didn't know what the general public would do if they found out just how much he loved sweet food. Still, he would sooner amputate his left leg than be seen in Honeydukes.

In truth, he was glad that the Chosen One and his ginger parasite hadn't come back to Hogwarts. It was infuriating enough to hear Potter speak on his behalf during his own trial, and Severus had no doubt that Potter would have taken his hero worship into the school to further educate the students on why they shouldn't be afraid of their Potions Professor. Because, really, he's _squishy_ on the inside. Severus would never have been able to run a class with any semblence order again. He had spent a considerable amount of time dodging Potter and his inane questions at Order meetings and Ministry gatherings. Severus had burned every letter bearing his signature without reading it. He had no desire to discuss the boy's mother, whether he had loved her or not.

Loved. Past-tense.

The owls were heralded by the cacophony of beating wings and Severus turned his head up to watch them swoop into the Great Hall from the ceiling's Owl-Post holes. A copy of the _Daily Prophet _was dropped with a thud in front of Severus, narrowly missing his untouched bowl of goop. Severus shook the paper free from crumbs and rolled the rubber-band from it.

"Any word on the escapees, Severus?" on his right hand side Minerva leaned towards him with raised eyebrows. Severus didn't reply until he opened the paper to the second page, becoming quickly angry and slapping the paper down on the table in front of Minerva. Three weeks ago, an attack on Azkaban Prison had taken place which resulted in the break-out of twelve Death Eaters, three of which had been inner-circle members in the time of the Dark Lord. A couple of students glanced up at the noise of Severus' outburst and quickly stared back into their food when they saw the expession on his face. Minerva took her spectacles and perched them on the end of her nose to read the _Prophet_. "Well honestly Severus, I'd say you look quite handsome there." She handed the paper back to him.

He snarled at her, but calmed somewhat at her humour, took the toilet-worthy rag and perused the page again. Under a heading that read "ESCAPED DEATH EATERS SPOTTED IN DIAGON ALLEY" there was a picture of the side of Gringott's Wizarding Bank, his own face displayed on a large poster stuck to it. Over the poster written on the wall in what looked to be blood, was "Undersireable No. 1". Three goblins stood fidgeting at the edge of the photograph with buckets and sponges.

Severus sneered before tapping the paper with his dark wand, watching with satisfaction as it burst into flames and the ashes floated themselves into his porridge. He pushed the bowl to the side and turned to Minerva on his right. "They seem to have chosen their target against whom they'll rally supporters." he drawled, wiping ash from his robe's black sleve. It left a grey mark and he frowned at it, as if he could intimidate it away. "Should I be flattered that I am apparently more undesirable than Potter?"

Minerva gave a little chuckle and slapped him on the shoulder before sobering and frowning at him. "This is a serious matter, Severus." The corner of her eyes pinched as she looked at him. "If they have chosen you as a target then they may try to manipulate students into couriering sinister objects, or letting them into the castle." He frowned at her this time. "YOu do remember, of course, what happened with Ms Bell, and Mr Weasley when Draco was commissioned to kill the Headmaster." She held up her hand to stop him as he was about to speak. "I'm not saying that Mr Malfoy isn't trustworthy, Severus," he calmed a little. "Just that students have come in harms way in situations like this before, and I'll be damned if I let it happen again." She set a steely look on her face and drank her tea forcefully. How one can drink tea forcefully, Severus didn't know, but Minerva knew the technique.

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm, and then sat back in her chair agin, looking in Severus' direction. "Report to my office at seven tonight and I will have a plan ready." he inclined his head in agreement. "Merlin, Severus," she shook her head in defeat. "I don't know how much fight I have left in me for these sort of things."

"Come now, Minerva," he drawled lazily. "You're only pushing eighty."

She slapped him with the buttered side of her toast.

* * *

Severus emerged from the Pensieve, sat behind his black oak desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had ten minutes before he had to meet the Headmistress, he reminded himself. He had skipped dinner in favour of taking another trip through a collection of memories yet again. Dinner was an event he often missed these days. Severus thought to himself for a moment that maybe he should be worried about that. He wasn't.

Grabbing his black cotton robe, he threw it on with a satisfying _swish_, and left his office. The memories, yet again, had not yielded any positive result. There had been no positive results at all since he started his project.

Having woken up two days after the Final Battle, lying in the crisp and white Hospital Wing, he had been both predictably surprised and less predictably pleased to find himself alive. To find out that his saviour was, of all people, Hermione Granger, had been shocking to say the least. He spent a whole half a day demanding with Poppy to see her before she finally gave in and told him the Granger girl was dead. Severus didn't know whether to be guilty for being the second hand cause of another young woman's death, or to be angry at her for being such an idiot as to go back and save him.

The Aurors and other members of the Big Cleanup had never recovered a body, however, and he began on his own quest for answers. At first, Minerva had tried tried to dissuade him by pointing out the obvious; if she had been captured by any remaining Death Eaters, they would have advertised their prey quite spectacularly in revenge for their defeat. Minerva also stressed how long it had taken to run the Acromantula away from the castle. So, Severus thought to himself, she was most likely to have been eaten by a giant spider while trying to save his life. That definitely made him feel guilty.

Still, Severus had no certainty as to whether she was dead or alive. If she was alive somewhere out there, then he owed her a life debt. The last life debt he owed was to James Potter, and since then the idea of one had been sickening. For purely selfish reasons at the beginning, he had to do something to find her. He refused to owe another life debt. He would find her, and he would make her revoke it.

Severus succeeded in convincing Minerva to let him and a handful of Order members attempt to track her four days after the Battle. Though everyone was sceptical, Neville Longbottom, Bill Wealey, Arthur Weasley and Ronald Weasley agreed to help. The youngest Wealey male was overly eager in his distraught state and had to sit out of the first day of plans on request from his father. Perhaps not so unfortunately, Potter was out of commission for a week and a half after the Battle, in a comatose state. Severus supposed that dying by the Dark Lord's hand, coming back from the dead, and then vanquishing the Dark Lord could have been a reasonable stress on the senses. Severus almost felt sorry for the boy. Almost.

After three days of tracking spells and amateur foot-tracking, they came up empty handed. The tracking spells found nothing but dissipated magic in the classrooms that she used to frequently cast spells in, and eventually led the group to her wand. Potter joined in at the very last moment, and it was he who found Granger's broken wand in the grass in the grounds near the castle, beside where Severus himself had been found on the day of the Battle. How no-one had found the wand before that Severus did not know, but obviously it had been complete and utter idiots who had searched the grounds before them. The discovery of the wand had sent both Potter and Weasley into hysterics. Severus spent the day brewing Calming Draughts and wondering whether he sgould keep searching. He could not find a single trace of her base-magical signature. The abscence of base magic was indicative only of either _extremely _Dark magic, or death.

However, Severus kept searching.

Strolling through the stone hallways towards the Headmistress' office, Severus cloak flapped behind him like dark storm clouds on a grey sky.

For just a few moments, Severus let himself admit that he carried a very obsessive personality. First, there had been Lily. He very nearly winced remembering just how obsessed he had been with her, both when he was young and also after she died. He seemed to use her as a crutch, but he had finally managed after the Battle to drop her and walk free. He felt lighter for it, sometimes. Sometimes he just felt a little lonelier for it. But that was weak, and he would sneer at himself and snap out of those moods as quickly as possible without giving himself brain damage. Then, of course, he had obsessed over his Potions Mastery. He threw his whole body, mind and soul into his study and becoming the best in the profession. Even though at that same time he had just been enfolded into the Dark Lord's circle, he never gave You-Know-Who half as much of his attention as he did his apprenticeship. After the incident where his actions had the result of Lily being put on the Dark Lord's hit list, he had put his all into spying for Dumbledore to atone for his mistakes. Then when the Potter boy started school, it was time to obsess over his safety. He may also have accidentally obsessed himself with his hatred of the boy and his father, but of course, that was accidental. Severus snorted to himself in the quiet of the corridor.

So maybe it wasn't all that unnatural a reaction for him to have become slightly obsessed with Hermione Granger. Severus frowned internally. _Somewhat more than obsessed, these days. _

When the tracking failed, Severus turned instead to gathering memories. He approached most of the people who had seen her that night, asking for memories of those moments. Most had given him suspicious looks, but given in, in the end, because fortunately he could still utilise his frightening-professor image. It was hard to say no to someone who had harshly graded your homework during your school years.

The memories began with sightings during the Final Battle. Severus watched each and every one of them, and not a single memory showed the moment she disappeared, or even before it. He watched her fight Death Eaters. He memorised the colour of every spell she sent, and the movement of her lips on the incantations. His eyes trailed every bead of sweat the trailed down her forehead. He heard every gasp of pain or surprise, over and over again. He watched her fly from Fiendfyre and stab a Horcrux. He only watched her kiss the Weasley boy once. That particular memory made him feel slightly ill.

The more he watched memories of her, the more often he found his breath catch in his lungs, and his heart would situate itself inside his throat. He would find himself trying to grab her attention. Trying to grab at her, or her name would die behind his lips.

Severus rounded a corner and began to ascend the many staircases from the dungeons to the third floor. He expertly dodged trick steps and the stairs seemed to move with him, not trying to shift his path or dislodge him. The stairs brought him quickly to the Headmistress' gargoyle guardian.

Realising he was four minutes early, Severus moved further down the corridor and stood by a window, perusing the grounds. The sun was beginning to set, and the sky was painted gold.

* * *

Minerva placed her teacup back into the saucer with a clink. Severus never liked her tea set, it was too floral and delicate for his own taste. It was impossible to feel like there was any serious work being done when holding a tiny cup with pink flower patters on it. "Well," Minerva started. "I'm afraid you're going to have to go into hiding, Severus."

The teacup stopped just in front of his mouth. "Excuse me?" He lowered the cup when he realised it was muffling his words, and raised an eyebrow. "I hardly think that would be necessary." He put his cup on Minerva's ancient desk and she tutted at him and placed a napkin underneath it.

"You'll give the desk rings, Severus." She frowned at him and grew serious. Her fingers steepled in front of her, her elbows resting on the desk. "I do think it will be necessary." She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I am sorry, but the safety of the children in this school _cannot _be compromised. The students have been through enough, now is time for things to go back to normal again."

Severus bit the inside of his cheek. Minerva was his superior, both as Headmistress of the school, and as the head of the Order. On the inside, Severus thought that she was highly overreacting, but he could not question her orders. He very much doubted that a couple of rouge Death Eaters necessitated a stint in hiding. He rubbed his chin. "Who will you find to take over my classes?"

"I have already been in correspondence with Horace, and he has agreed to come back for the necessary time, but only for a large pay rise." Minerva huffed a breath, cheeks ballooning. "That man is one of the most greedy and gluttinous that I know, but he is the best for the job, after yourself, of course." She rubbed her hand across her brow. "I do hope you understand why I am doing this, Severus."

"I still think it an overreaction, Minerva." He replied, and the corners of his mouth twitched as she got agitated. "However, I do realise that the safety of the students is... _important_... and I recognise that you, as my superior, are free to dictate what I do." He knew he was being unfair and vindictive with that comment, but he was more than mildly annoyed at being uprooted over such a minor threat.

Minerva pursed her lips, looking like she'd had something unpleasant spread underneath her nose. "You will be leaving now," she took a quill from her drawer and began writing on the parchment laying on her desk. "There is no need to pack anything," his eyebrows rose in surprise, she was shipping him off tonight? And where was he going that he couldn't pack his books or clothes? "And, I'm afraid you are not going to like this part, Severus." His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Minerva..." his tone was warning.

"I'm afraid I'm going to need your wand." She sighed, and Severus' anger increased to dangerous levels. He could feel it bubbling under the surface of his skin like boiling water, red hot and dangerous.

"Would you like to explain to me, exactly _why I will not be able to bring my wand_?" he bit out between clenched teeth.

"You will be going to live in a Muggle home." Minerva replied calmly, looking over her glasses at him in a disturbingly similar way to how Albus used to.

A vein in Severus's temple throbbed to the beat of his temper. "You mean to tell me, that I will be going into hiding from Death Eaters, _without. My. Wand_?"

She puffed and rubbed her mouth. "You will be perfectly safe Severus, you are leaving the country," she supplied, "and no Death Eater would think to search for you in the Muggle world. You _will_ do this Severus." her face became hard, her tone turning to cold steel. "I will not be sending letters, but do not worry about being protected. You will be fine Severus."

"Where exactly am I going?" his anger deflated as he realised there was no winning this time. Minerva would take no compromise, and Severus's body seemed to sink further into the chair. He was annoyed, but defeated.

"Dublin, Ireland." she answered crisply. "I have a letter here, for the homeowner -" she gave him a stern look as she handed him the brown envelope. "- do not read it." He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"What gives you the impression that I would do such a thing, Minerva?" he teased smoothly. She smiled a thin-lipped smile and fished something out of her desk drawer.

"Only your manner, dear." he smirked, and she handed him another envelope. "This is your money, and this is the address." She shook his hand in reassurance as she handed him the last slip of paper with the address on it, the other two envelopes secure in his trouser pocket.

"How am I to get to this destination?" Severus queried, reading the address and examining the money she had given him.

"Floo through to 'Clancy's Pub, Dublin' and get one of those _tack-see_ _cars_ to take you to the address." she smiled at him reassuringly again. "Your wand, if you would."

Severus took the wand reluctantly from his pocket, but help it out of her reach when she went to take it. "What will you do with it?" he kept his face expressionless, but really it was worrying him to leave his wand behind.

"Don't worry, Severus." she pat him on the shoulder and he looked at her incredulously. "It's going behind Albus's portrait until you come back." he relented and handed her the wand and watched it as she opened the portrait of a sleeping Albus Dumbledore and locked it in a hidden hole behind it. "Hold on a moment."

He stopped moving towards the fireplace and drew back when he saaw her fingers reach for him. She scolded him; "I was just going to remove your frock coat, it looks decidedly _un_-Muggle."

He frowned and flattened his lips at her as if she was a small child that had just knocked over a glass of water, and began to unbutton his frock coat. Taking it over his shoulders, he left it on the back of the plush, wing-backed red chair he had just vacated. He shifted where he stood, only feeling more exposed as he lost another layer of protection. He felt that he didn't look all that Muggle in his black shirt with the high-necked collar and dragonhide boots anyway, what difference would the coat have made?

Reassuring himself that he had all envelopes and slips of paper secure in his pocket, he let Minerva pat him on the shoulder once more before he disappeared in a rush of green flames.

* * *

Severus stepped out of the dark car displaying the word "taxi" on an illuminated sign on the top, along with a list of numbers he did not know the significance for. He took out a £5 note with a nun on it to pay the driver, and told him to keep the change. Turning away from the moving car, Severus' admonished himself for his weak stomach. It had been nigh on two and a half decades since he had been in a car, and he certainly did not miss it. Obviously apparition and Floo had their dangers, btu he trusted fireplaces and his own magic infinitely more than a bald taxi-criver piloting a lump of welded metal fueled by dinosaurs.

He examined the building in front of him. it was a part of a surrounding apartment complexes, three floors. The sign outside displayed numbers 12 to 18, and Severus examined the piece of paper with the address on it again. Number 14, he needed. He frowned at the brick building; Severus had no idea what was the apartment building was laid out. Did 12 start at the top or the bottom? Left or right? He wasn't aware he looked lost until someone walked up to him.

Severus smelled the man coming before he saw him. Some sort of rancid body-spray that reminded him of what his mother would spray around the house if they had guests coming. Severus turned towards the sound of the footsteps and faced the man. He wore a blue jacket that looked to almost be made of plastic, and baggy, grey trousers, with assaultingly white shoes.

"Yer not lost, are ya?" he looked Severus up and down with amusement. "What tha fuck are ya wearin'? You one-a dem emos or sumn like dah?" he laughed to himself as if he'd made a brilliant joke, Severus sneered at him and was about to tell him exactly where to go when he began talking again. "You're probably lookin' for Milo's place, yeah? Number fourteen?" when he saw Severus nod hesitantly, a look of arrogant pride came over his greasy face. "Second floor, man. The one on de left."

"Thank you..." Severus said sarcastically and began to move towards the building. The greasy creature stopped him with a hand on Severus arm, and he pulled out of his reach with a sneer.

"You haven' goh a spare smoke, have yah?"

"No, unfortunately." the man nodded his head and gave Severus a piercing look as he walked away. Severus turned and made his way towards the building again, lips pursed in disgust at his surroundings. "Ungrateful prick." he heard distantly behind him.

The buildings were made of red brick, and as he came to the staircase in the middle of the building he noted an abundance of graffiti on the inside of the stairwell. He eyed the particular pieces of the male anatomy spotted here and there on the walls as he ascended the stairs with particular distaste.

He finished the stairs quickly, letting his long legs take them two at a time. As hesitant as he felt about being forced to stay with a total stranger (a _Muggle _stranger at that), he found that being on his own in the unfamiliar environment was making him tense. He had not succeeded in completely turning off his spy-senses, and everything he had learned from his experiences suggested that everything was wrong about his current situation.

Severus finally found himself in front of a peeling, grey door displaying the number fourteen. He fished the envelope with a letter and the money from his pocket and raised his hand to knock on the wood.

His hand stilled an inch from the door as he heard voices from the other side.

"_Milo?_" a male voice called. Severus gathered that he was definitely in front of the door the greasy Irishman had directed him towards earlier. He didn't know how this Milo person knew Minerva, but if she found them trustworthy, then at least a miniscule amount of Severus's worries were assuaged. He still had many reservations on how well this person was going to be able to hide him, and was more than doubtful of how well they could protect themselves (never mind him) from escaped Death Eaters. Severus resolved to wait outside the door and listen before knocking.

"_Peter, what do you want?_" One of Severus' eyebrows rose. So Milo was a woman, then? Severus began to wonder whether it was actually the Peter fellow that Minerva was aquainted with.

"_Will you sing me my song?_" Severus had to suppress a snort. He was becoming more and more doubtful of these two's competance by the minute.

"_No Peter, I'm in the middle of making your fuckin' sandwich._"

"_Milo pleeease,_" Severus sneered at the childish pleading. He had half a mind to turn around and live on the street instead; it almost seemed preferrable to whatever sort of place this was. However, he had no idea how long he was going to be in hiding, and this would obviously be where Minerva would come looking for him. Severus stayed quiet as "Peter" began to speak again. "_C'mooon, I'm sick!_"

He heard a feminine sigh over footsteps, then the sound of couch springs. Severus was about to knock when she began to sing. He paused to listen; the sound was pleasant and sweet. He began to listen with more attention when he realised there was an English accent.

"_Oh, Peter,_  
_Can I go back home?_  
_I flew here under false pretense_  
_I thought it would be fun,_  
_But the lost boys have all flown away_  
_And one of them's locked up._  
_I know I think you're still a child,_  
_But I couldn't give a fuck_  
_You're twenty-one._"

Severus's hand hit the door by accident, having stopped paying attention when he the girl start singing.

"_What was that?_" Peter.

"_The door, I think._" Severus heard couch springs again and readied himself, schooling his features into an intimidating expression, prepared to look down his nose at whoever answered the door. "_I'll go finish your sandwich, you get it._"

Couch springs once more, and the lock on the door began to jingle. Severus heard the "Ughhh" behind it as it opened.

Severus's eyebrows rose yet again at the person who opened the door. This was obviously Peter, but he was not the figure Severus was expecting. Peter matched Severus inch for inch in height, had dark hair, brown eyes, pale skin, and jewlery dangling from various facial features. The boy couldn't have been more than twenty.

Peter's eyebrows rose in surprise and looked him up and down. "Ehh, sorry, can I help you?"

Severus shoved the envelope at him and waited for the boy to open it. He took the letter and unfolded it. Eyebrows rising as he read. Severus regarded the strange appearance of the boy while he was busy. Noting the rings in his eyebrow, nose and lip, Severus also noticed that there were quite large holes in the boy's earlobes. He sneered again, finding the creature in front of him to be probably some sort of idiot.

Peter once again looked up at Severus, before calling out over his shoulder. "Milo, is' for you!" Turning back to Severus, he gestured for him to come inside. "So is your name Minerva then?" He looked at Severus suspiciously.

Severus near growled. Idiot, indeed. "It is not. My name is Severus Snape."

"Oh shite." The boy's mouth had fallen open in shock. "It is not." He shook his head in disbelief. "As in _Professor_ Severus Snape?"

Severus nodded. He heard the girl shout out from the kitchen. "Peter, ask whoever it is if they want tea."

"Milo, I think you'd better get out here."

"I'll be out in a moment."

"No, really, Professor Snape is here."

Severus's skin jumped at the sound of smashing porcilean.

* * *

_So, how was this chapter? Props to anyone who realised who Milo was._

_"Milo" is pronounced My-Low just in case anyone was wondering. Also, if anyone has any urges to find out exactly what these people sound like in real life, I suggest watching the movie "Adam and Paul" (I'm sure you can find it online). It's set in Dublin around the same areas that this story will be set in._

_The title and the song lyrics are from "Peter" by Daughter. If you want something to model Milo's voice off of, Elena Tonra is who I had in mind while I was writing._

_Thank you so much for your reviews by the way! A special thanks to Shorty653 who pointed out a mistake for me in the Prologue that I have since corrected. Please do me the favour of reviewing again! Thank you._


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